Not minding the gap: Britons dis

On March 20th, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, instructed all of the country’s pubs and restaurants to shut to help stem【阻止】 the spread of covid-19.

Yet data released over the weekend suggest that Britons are still mingling【混合】 more than people in most other Western countries.

Citymapper, a route-planning app with 20m users, created a “mobility index” that estimates how much people are moving around in a selection of 40 cities, compared with a typical day.

Western Europe and North America have seen the sharpest declines, as the virus has claimed hundreds of lives in several countries.

But among places where the death toll has reached three figures, Britain is an outlier【异常值；异常点】.

On March 20th mobility in London, Manchester and Birmingham hovered around 25% of normal levels.

New York was at 10%, with Rome, Paris and Madrid all at 5% or below.

Unless Britain’s government takes more stringent【严格的；严厉的；紧缩的；短缺的】 action—and its people follow official advice—the country may be headed for【向…方向前进】 trouble.

Mar 23rd 2020